The present invention relates to isolating the heart in medical image data, and more particularly, to isolating the heart in medical imaging data for patients with coronary artery bypasses.
Heart isolation refers separating the heart in medical image data from other tissues in close proximity to the heart, such as the lungs, liver, and rib cage. Most previous work relating heart segmentation focuses on segmenting heart chambers, especially the left ventricle. Segmenting the heart as a whole, or heart isolation, has relevance to several applications. For example, after separating the heart from the proximity tissues (e.g., lung, liver, and rib cage) in a 3D computed tomography (CT) volume, the coronary arteries can be clearly visualized in 3D. According to statistics from the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is among the most common types of CVD. A 3D visualization of the coronary artery tree provides an intuitive view for cardiologists to easily diagnose suspicious coronary segments. In addition, the same cardiac CT data can be used to generate angiographic-like images that can replace conventional angiograms in many cases. In both applications, the segmented heart mask should not cut the coronary arteries, which run on the surface of the heart. This provides a significant challenge to heart segmentation algorithms.